JAVA

Ok, so like everyone else I guess I need to comment on the SUNW to JAVA move. I imagine every Java developer will find this a bizarre idea and that was my first reaction. But frankly we're not the target audience and seeing how everyone and their mother feels they need to comment on this topic, I'm thinking this is turning out to be a very good communication strategy. Oh, and this is just a ticker name.

( août 24 2007, 10:46:17 AM CEST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Now powered by Apache Roller 4.0

blogs.sun.com, the website with 3325+ weblogs, 3681+ users, 70416+ posts and 66976+ comments is now running on Roller 4.0 which now requires Java 5 and is built on Struts 2 and a JPA back-end. It all happened as you would expect for any SaaS. Transparently. Roller deployment has also gotten a lot simpler. You simply need to deploy the Roller WAR with no need to setup a JNDI data-source (no table creation either) or javamail. More here I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the BSC team for the excellent job they do every day. I'm always sad to see people leave JRoller thinking the software is the problem. For all three blogs I author, I've always had excellent service. Thanks!

( juin 19 2007, 12:51:00 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

OpenID'd!

http://openid.sun.com/alexismp

( juin 06 2007, 02:12:45 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Open source is not about "good enough" clones

This JavaOne was certainly big on client technologies which probably made my friend Romain very happy. Just looking at three announcements it may sound as if these are simply clones to existing technologies: JavaFX is compared to Flash, WorldWind Java to Google Earth and Project Wonderland (and derived MPK20) to SecondLife.

They all have Java in common but that's not the point. I would argue that community work and openness is what makes plausible the promise of taking existing concepts to a new level. Open source JavaFX runs everywhere, not just in most browsers, but on all platforms. WorldWind Java is not extensible via plugins, it *is* a plugin. Project Wonderland is bringing business collaboration to what today is essentially anonymous gaming.

( mai 14 2007, 05:00:00 PM CEST ) Permalink

3 years later

Blogs.Sun.Com (BSC) is three years old today. Thanks P@ for showing me the ropes and bugging until I started Bistro!. Tim Bray has also been the inspiration and I certainly recommend his Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career for those who've never read it.

I'm only a month and a half behind the BSC launch and this has been and still is a great adventure with 512 entries (less than 1% of the total BSC blogs) and 653 comments (just a little over 1%). This is not counting my recent contributions to TheAquarium and Stories blogs.

Thanks for all the fish!

( avr. 27 2007, 11:36:08 AM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

top techno heads

Tim Bray is #26, James is #64, Simon is #58, Andy Bechtolsheim is #52, and Greg Papadopoulos is #39 in eWeeks's Top 100 Most Influential People in IT.

I can't imagine Jonathan not being in the top 25.

Update: yes, Jonathan is #19. A lot of CEOs and CIOs is this last top-25 list.

( avr. 18 2007, 09:34:44 AM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Java ES 5 is out

If you're not familiar with Java Enterprise System, this is the middleware offering from Sun covering Identity, SOA, Application Platform, and High-Availability.

It's called a System because a lot of work went into integration products upfront. There is the notion of "common components". For instance only one version of a JVM is used by all products (still Java 5 for the time being). The end-result is a single installer for over 20 products dealing with dependencies, a single patching mechanism and now with version 5 a single administration infrastructure. Java ES is available as a single download (from 500Mb to 800Mb), but also as "Suites" for Solaris, Linux, Windows and HP-UX (no more compatibility matrix hell).

Main new products are Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSSE) 6, Web Server 7, Portal 7.1. Support for Solaris Zones is another big features IMO.

I've been covering this product internally at Sun for the field sales and technical teams, tracking changes, updates and I can testify how much work went into this release. It certainly removes a great deal of effort on the customer side having this all integrated, tested and architectured from the ground up to be a system. Hope you enjoy it.

Of course, there's also the business model side of things as well. The System and the Suites can be sold on a per-employee subscription basis. This is the other important part of the equation which makes the model tick.

( mars 02 2007, 01:27:45 PM CET ) Permalink Comments [4]

Who does Java outship?


( févr. 07 2007, 11:07:15 AM CET ) Permalink Comments [1]

FLOSS: Sun's #1
If you haven't already seen the news: Sun's ranked first in Open Source contributions in a report for the EU. It's on page 51, it's more than three times what IBM did and it doesn't take Java into account. This is essentially ammunition for what Sun's been claiming for a while now.

Some headlines (such as this one) are just funny - Open Source is global, there's no such thing as the European Open Source market when it comes to contributors.

Anyway Sun, now it's time to monetize!
( janv. 17 2007, 10:55:13 PM CET ) Permalink

GlassFish in a book
Of course there's already the Java EE 5 Tutorial, but now there's also "EJB 3, Des concepts à l'écriture du code. Guide du développeur". Yes, it's in French and it's very good too. It was written by a group of talented and passionate students from the SUPINFO Sun Lab in Paris who asked me to proof-read it (and write a short foreword).

The book deals with all flavors of EJB's, JPA, has a section on my favorite Java EE 5 feature: Application Client Container (ACC) which becomes so much more relevant with client-level resource injection (WebServices refs, datasources, security context, ...) and GlassFish's Java Web Start feature as the extra mile to ease deployment. The book also covers GlassFish, NetBeans, JBoss, and Eclipse WTP in a dedicated chapter, has a full sample application using Seam running on GlassFish).

Maybe this is the first book mentioning GlassFish?

( déc. 01 2006, 01:57:00 PM CET ) Permalink

L'important n'est pas d'avoir des brevets, mais de savoir ce que l'on en fait
J'étais hier aux 10 ans de l'APRIL. Il y a rapidement été question de brevets. La position de Sun est simple: les brevets existent et ne vont pas disparaitre rapidement, ni aux Etats-Unis, ni en Europe.

L'important n'est pas d'avoir des brevets, mais de savoir ce que l'on en fait.

Lors de la standardisation par l'OASIS, de Open Document Format (issu de OpenOffice), Sun a publié un "non-assertion covenant" qui explique que, même si Sun possède des brevets, la société s'engage à ne pas les utiliser. Certains y verront une similitude avec la dissuasion nucléaire.

( nov. 22 2006, 03:10:38 PM CET ) Permalink Comments [1]

PRESTO, GlassFish, and NetBeans (WS-*)

I spent some time since this summer working on a prototype for the French government. The project is called PRESTO ("PRotocole d’Echanges Standard et Ouvert") and is documented here. The goal is to define a profile (a la WS-I) for a transport protocol based on Web Services for better and more standard interop between ministries and related organisations. In a nutshell, it's about using WS-I Basic Profile, SOAP 1.2, MTOM, WS-Addressing, WS-ReliableMessaging, and optionally OASIS WS-Security.

There was (is) an interesting set of participants and technologies :
- Bull using Apache Axis 2 and ObjectWeb's JOnAS
- Zend relying on WSO2's Tungsten C implementation of Axis 2 to work as a PHP plugin
- Axway working with the Systinet/Mercury/HP web engine (SSJ)
- Microsoft with .Net 3.0 (WCF)
- Sun with Java EE 5 (GlassFish)

More details on Sun's prototype, technology and differentiators are described here (in a nutshell : full Open Source, toolable, and brain-dead simple programing). Everything is now part of GlassFish (as of recent v2 builds) and will be productized in Sun Application Server 9.1.

Absent were IBM, Oracle, JBoss, and BEA for various reasons, mainly because their respective offerings were not ready. Ironically, IBM claims it inspired PRESTO with their WS-RAMP specification (which itself came from two of their customers) but was unable to show any implementation. WS-RAMP seems like it could serve as a basis to a future WS-I profile which could end up being a replacement to PRESTO.

Representing WS02 was Paul Fremantle who's the chair of the OASIS WS-ReliableMessaging technical committee and an Axis 2 commiter. Paul has already blogged about PRESTO here.

The prototype involved working on a common WSDL definition of document/literal one-way and two-way operations and testing the interop of all combinations (with or without MTOM, WS-ReliableMessaging) between all implementations. Coming up with a common WSDL wasn't an easy job and many found out what wrapped doc/lit was all about (although this convention isn't really well documented).

The results are encouraging but not perfect, so the work on both the prototype and the PRESTO specification are still ongoing. The best results are shown with the Sun/GlassFish + Microsoft/WCF combination (100% PASS) showing the value of the engineering work between Sun and Microsoft as part of the Tango project. For the tests with other implementations, the NetTool tunnel was very useful although XML remains XML - a pain to read, a nightmare to debug.

Writing the Sun prototype for me was really a matter of using JAX-WS 2.0 (and the underlying JAXB 2.x binding architecture), understanding the GlassFish WSIT extensions (great tutorial here) and using the NetBeans WSIT plug-in which allows you to declaratively set the MTOM, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-Security properties. Writing a flexible-enough testing Swing UI was also fun, but better yet was writing the OpenOffice client demo.

PRESTO has clearly shown some European interest among the 130 attendees in last month's presentation in Paris and clearly fits a need.


( nov. 20 2006, 09:47:00 AM CET ) Permalink

Les lecteurs de LMI vous le disent...
... sur le nouveau site du Monde Informatique:


( nov. 09 2006, 04:40:25 PM CET ) Permalink

Ubuntu and Sun

https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/ubuntu.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/sun
... but I'm stickin' to Solaris 10 for now...

( sept. 13 2006, 10:18:00 AM CEST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Free GlassFish Training
The Sun Java(TM) System Application Server Platform Edition 9: Overview Course has been released a couple of months ago. 99% of the training is Glassfish-relevant and the course is a nice multimedia format. Here's the outline:

1: Introducing the Sun Java(TM) System Application Server PE 9
2: Installing and Administering Application Server PE 9
3: Key Technologies in Application Server PE 9
4: JMX Infrastructure and the AMX API
5: SOA Features in Application Server PE 9
6: Deployment
7: Developer Experience Features
8: Performance Features
9: Debugging and Troubleshooting
10: Security

( août 02 2006, 07:55:00 AM CEST ) Permalink